A Man for All Seasons
by loveleee
Summary: A year in the life of the Mockingjay and the men who love her. Written for the March 2013 Prompts in Panem challenge on tumblr.


**A Man for All Seasons**

* * *

**68 degrees, 0% chance of rain**

Summer in District Thirteen is just like autumn, winter and spring in District Thirteen: 68 degrees; lights that shut off at 9 pm; odorless, sterile air.

For no reason that Katniss can discern, the few children here still get the summertime off from school, and as she wanders the corridors she often bumps into the young ones chasing each other through the halls, or a gaggle of teens around Prim's age gossiping in a hushed huddle. They make her feel ancient.

Some days she stumbles upon Finnick during her aimless walks around the compound, always alone, always with his frayed length of rope in hand. Sometimes they chat about mindless things, like a strange-tasting soup from lunch or the odd quality of the lights in Thirteen ("fluorescent", Plutarch explains). Sometimes they don't talk at all. He's the only one who understands her silence, because he meets it with his own.

Finnick looks different in District Thirteen, like a flower wilting in the shade. Without a prep team, his skin grows paler. His hair lies flat over his forehead, and the roots grow long enough to reveal a shade more brown than bronze. It's ironic, she thinks, that he looks smaller and thinner here, despite the carefully calibrated meals they're served in the dining hall.

He's still beautiful. Finnick Odair could never be anything but beautiful. But the underground city reveals something that was always obscured in daylight: he's mortal. He'll end up under the dirt one day, just like the rest of them will.

"I loved summer in Four," Finnick tells her one afternoon as they sit on top of two desks in an empty classroom, his hands busy with his rope. She watches as he knots it, over and over, his fingers moving so quickly her eyes can hardly keep up.

"Really?" Katniss remembers her stop there on the Victory Tour, how the air was damp and warm even as snow fell back home in Twelve. Effie had said _be thankful we don't bring you here in summer! _and Katniss had looked at Peeta and he'd given her one of those sad smiles, the ones that warmed her but squeezed tight at her heart, and in that moment it had been enough.

"It's hot as hell, but then you jump in the ocean and it just feels…incredible." His eyes take on a faraway look. "And Annie had this yellow swimsuit…" He shakes his head a little. "I haven't been there for summer in years, though. They always kept me in the Capitol."

Katniss says nothing. It would've been her fate, too, if things had gone as she once thought they would: traveling every summer to the Capitol with a fresh pair of tributes. Training them. Losing them. Days spent in climate-controlled apartments, cars, trains. Nights in unfamiliar beds, while the woods of District Twelve called out to her in her dreams.

But at least Peeta would have been there too, steady and safe by her side, her constant in the middle of chaos.

"What's it like in Twelve?" Finnick asks gently, pulling her out of her dark thoughts. She thinks for a moment.

"Hot," she says. "But it gets cooler at night, because we're near the mountains. It's nice." She hesitates before remembering that she's in Thirteen, and even though this room might be bugged just like the Victors' Village, no one here cares about whatever illegal activities she might have engaged in back home. "There was this lake out in the woods where my dad taught me to swim. It was really beautiful in summer."

"I wondered where you learned to swim," Finnick admits, smirking a little. "Didn't seem like something you picked up in the Capitol. I guess you never took Peeta there."

She knows he's just making a joke, but it feels like a stab to the gut anyway. She had never taken Peeta to the lake, or the woods, or any of the places where she could believe, for a few precious seconds, that she was free.

Now she never would.

"Sorry," Finnick says quietly, catching on.

Katniss shrugs, frowning down at her hands in her lap. She wishes she had a rope of her own to distract her. "It's okay."

"We'll get out of here someday." His voice strains for confidence, but she can tell he's trying to convince himself, too. "You'll swim in your lake again. And I'll show you the ocean. There's nothing like it."

She tries to smile. "I saw it once, from the train in Four."

Finnick nods. "They used to let the victors onto the beach. Dip their toes in the sand. But one drowned himself one year." His hands jerk suddenly, pulling a knot extra tight. "I think I was eight or nine that year."

She closes her eyes; imagines how desperate she'd have to be to do that. To load up her pockets with stones, or tangle herself in seaweed, or just disappear under the water and never return.

It's not that hard to picture it.

"The only summers I ever spent with Peeta were in the games," Katniss says, the realization hitting her out of nowhere. Tears fill her eyes before she knows what's happening, her lungs tight in her chest.

Finnick's hand is cold but strong when his fingers wrap around her fist, an anchor in deep water. He doesn't speak. Katniss chokes on the air, dry and stale.

They sit there, together, until a sun they can't see sets below the edge of a land the world forgot.

* * *

**52 degrees, partly cloudy**

Autumn is cool in District Two, the air crisp and pungent with the scent of dying leaves. Back home it was her favorite season, but now Katniss moves through the days in a haze. She feels frozen, yet balanced on the precipice of change, and she's desperate for something to _happen_.

Gale arrives in Two. They hunt together, but something feels off. They stumble over rocks and branches in the forest, their bodies no longer in sync. She tells herself it's just the unfamiliar terrain.

(Part of her knows that it's something more, that something between them has been broken for a long time now.)

Plutarch calls nearly every day with news of Peeta's "progress", but Haymitch sets her straight each time he gets on the phone. She hates him a little bit for it, but she's also grateful. "I don't want to get your hopes up, sweetheart," he tells her wearily. She nods in silence, before she realizes he can't see her.

"You don't need to worry about hopes," she says.

One night she lies on her cot in the latest safe house and rolls the pearl that Peeta gave her on the beach between her palms. The motion is steady, soothing. She's close to drifting off to sleep when footsteps creak on the floorboards and the door opens.

Gale starts when he sees her. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize you were sleeping."

Katniss sits up quickly, and in her surprise she drops the pearl. It lands on the floor with a click and rolls out of sight. Her chest seizes up in panic.

There's a heating vent in the floor under the cot. If the pearl – if it falls –

"No," she whispers, and drops to the ground on her knees, stretching her arm as far back under the cot as it will reach. Her palm slides over the floor, finding nothing but dust. "No, no, no," she whimpers, the words growing steadily louder.

"Whoa, whoa. What's the matter?" Gale falls to his knees beside her and bends down to peek under the cot. "What are you looking for?"

She gestures wildly, unable to form a coherent thought. "Gale, please," she cries desperately. "Help me find it."

He slides his torso under the cot, coughing at the dust. "What am I looking for?" he asks. "What the – oh." He's silent for a moment, and Katniss watches in barely contained terror as he slides back out, his fingers clenched tight around something. Gale takes her hand gently and presses his palm against hers, giving her the pearl. He closes her shaking fingers around it. "All safe," he says quietly.

She doesn't answer, just stares at her closed fist, breathing heavily. She'd almost lost it – but she couldn't, she couldn't lose him again –

She doesn't even realize she's crying until Gale drapes his arm around her uncertainly, giving her a quick squeeze. "Hey, it's okay," he says soothingly. "You've got it now. It's okay."

A loud, heaving sob escapes her, but Gale just lets her cry, running his fingers lightly up and down her arm. When she's done he scoots a few inches away, training his eyes on the floor as she wipes at her face with her sleeve.

"Thank you," she whispers hoarsely.

"You're welcome." He gestures to her hand, still clenched in a fist. "Is that – the one he gave you?"

She nods in silence, afraid to meet his eyes.

"I'm impressed. The old Katniss would've lost track of that in a few hours."

She knows that he's just trying to tease a smile out of her, but she shakes her head. "Please don't," she says quietly.

"Sorry," he murmurs.

They sit in silence as the sun sets, the inches between them feeling more like miles. Katniss wants him to leave, aching for solitude, but she knows if she asks him right now she'll sever the frayed connection that they're both desperately clinging to once and for all.

"He also gave me a locket," she says suddenly. Gale looks at her, questioning. "Did you see it?"

Gale nods. "I remember. The cameras couldn't catch what was inside of it, though."

Katniss climbs unsteadily to her feet and rummages beneath the blanket at the end of her cot for a moment. Her fingers clasp around the locket, the metal cool beneath her fingers. She sits cross-legged before Gale, letting the locket fall open with a soft click.

Gale stares at his own photo for a long moment, his face impassive. Finally he meets her eyes. "This is how he tried to convince you." It isn't a question.

"Yes."

"And it didn't work."

Guilt tugs at her heart, but she's past the point of lying to Gale now. "No."

Gale lets out a long, shaky breath. "You know, I thought it was weird that he wasn't playing up the baby angle," he admits. "I guess it's because he…he meant it."

Katniss bites her lip, trying to stave off the memory. Before she can answer, Gale shifts closer, then stands, seeming to think better of whatever he'd planned to do.

"I'll let you get some sleep now," he says. "Goodnight, Catnip."

She keeps her eyes trained on the locket in her hands as he stands and walks to the door. "Goodnight," she says quietly.

She doesn't watch him leave.

* * *

**31 degrees, snow and wind**

Winter is in full swing when the Capitol releases her back to Twelve. The door to her house in the village is frosted shut, and she almost gives up trying to pry it open. There's a snowbank beside the front porch; she could curl up in it, let the cold carry her off into a quiet, painless death.

But Haymitch must see her from his own front window, because he shows up with a pick axe and helps scrape away the frost. She doesn't know why Haymitch has a pick axe lying around, and she doesn't ask. "Thanks," she mumbles, and he trundles back to his house in silence.

Weeks pass. The days bleed together; sometimes it snows, sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't matter, because she never leaves the house. Greasy Sae shows up every day with food, so there's no need to venture past the front door.

The old woman doesn't say much, but one particularly cold morning she leans back against the kitchen counter and crosses her arms, fixing Katniss with a steely glare. "You ever check on that old man?" she asks.

Katniss isn't sure who she means at first, but – oh. _Haymitch_. "No," she says shortly.

"You should," Sae tells her. "No one in town's seen him in weeks."

_They haven't seen me, either_, she wants to retort, but then again, she has Sae dropping by to feed her every day. "I'm sure he's fine," she says stubbornly.

"Probably drank himself to death by now," Sae mutters, turning back to the stove.

Sae's words stick in Katniss' mind long after she leaves, and eventually her guilt boils over. She shrugs on the first warm coat she sees in the closet – it was her mother's, she thinks – and pulls on her hunting boots. They feel strange and heavy on her feet; she hasn't worn shoes for weeks.

She pounds on Haymitch's front door, but there's no answer, so she jiggles the handle. It's unlocked. She steps inside slowly, wrinkling her nose. The stench of rot is overpowering.

"Haymitch?" It's also cold inside – very cold. The houses in the village look fancy, but they're not well-built, as Katniss had learned last winter when drafts of freezing wind would creep in through the cracks and wake her in the middle of the night, shivering. Now she keeps a fire crackling in the hearth nearly all day and night, and the heat turned up high, though electricity comes and goes in spurts.

A quiet groan reaches her from the living room, and she finds Haymitch there, stretched out along the sofa. The cushions are splashed with dark splotches, undoubtedly from spilled drinks. "Haymitch," she sighs softly, dismayed.

He cranes his neck around and blinks at her blearily. "You doin' here?" he mumbles, mostly incoherent.

"I'm here to save you," she grumbles, and she pries a half-empty bottle of white liquor from his grip. He doesn't protest. His hand falls limply to the floor.

Katniss spots a blanket thrown over a chair in the corner, and she picks it up, throwing it over his sad, lumpy form. "Aren't you freezing in here? Why don't you have a fire going?"

Haymitch gestures vaguely to the liquor bottle, set just out of his reach on the coffee table. "Only way I know how to stay warm," he mumbles.

She stares at him for a long moment. "That's ridiculous, Haymitch," she says, noting the pile of logs by the fireplace. They must have been there since _last _winter. Within minutes she's built him a fire.

While Haymitch dozes she ventures into the kitchen, nearly gagging at the smell. She finds a trash bag under the sink and empties the fridge of its stale, rotting food. Maybe she'll ask Sae to start bringing her extra stew over here some days; it's not like Katniss is ever hungry enough to finish it herself.

Eventually Haymitch rouses and shuffles into the kitchen, wincing at the light that streams in through the window over the stove. "Could you shut that thing?"

"No," Katniss says.

He grumbles, but stays otherwise silent as she moves around the kitchen, sweeping crumbs and debris off of the counters and onto the floor. She finds a broom in the pantry, and while she sweeps Haymitch opens the fridge, peering at the empty shelves in confusion.

"Well what the hell am I supposed to eat now, sweetheart?"

Katniss scowls. "I don't know. Why don't you go into town and buy some damn groceries."

Haymitch scowls back. "The boy would've at least made me some bread."

Her heart rises unpleasantly in her throat, but she swallows it back down, trying to calm the sudden pounding behind her breastbone. "Don't say things like that," she says sharply. Haymitch raises his eyebrows in mild surprise, but he doesn't mention Peeta again.

By the time she's done with the kitchen, the sun has started to set. She knows she needs to get home – the fire in her own house will be burning down to its last embers, the cold ready to sneak in and take over. As she reaches the front door, Haymitch clears his throat behind her.

"Thank you, sweetheart." For the first time since she can remember, it sounds like an endearment, not an insult.

She turns back to him and tries to smile, but the muscles in her face protest from lack of use. Haymitch smirks. She must look funny. "You're welcome."

Wrapping her coat around her middle, she heads back out into the chill.

* * *

**72 degrees, mostly sunny**

Spring has a rainy, slow start this year, and by the time they have their first truly sunny day Peeta has been back for months already.

She still feels tentative around him, like a newborn fawn learning to balance on its spindly legs. But they're not afraid to touch each other now. They hold hands. They hug. When they're alone in the soft, quiet cocoon of nighttime, they kiss.

The first night that it's warm enough to leave the windows open she lets him run his fingers over the bare skin of her stomach, his hands sliding up to cup her breasts through the sheer fabric of her bra. Her nipples pebble under his touch, and she knows it's not because of the cool breeze wafting in through the window.

"I love this time of year," Peeta tells her later that week, his hands dusted with flour as he kneads a ball of dough in his kitchen. He still does most of his baking in his house, because that's where all his supplies are, but he spends every night in her bed and she's starting to wonder if maybe he shouldn't just move in. It would be easier.

Katniss tilts her head, thinking. "Really?"

Spring wasn't all bad. Spring meant dandelions bursting from the soil, and animals emerging from their winter hideaways, and sunshine that warmed her skin in a way that a fire never could. But it had also always meant that the Reaping was just a few short months away. It was hard to look past that.

"Really." He drapes a kitchen towel over the dough – to let it rise, she knows now – and turns to the sink to wash his hands. "Everything starts to grow back. It's like the world is just…opening up and blooming, you know?"

In a way she does know, because it's what she sees when she looks into his sky blue eyes, what she feels when his hands are on her skin. It's what she thinks about that night when he moves inside of her for the first time, when he asks her if she loves him, when she tells him, _real._

They hold hands when they walk into town the next day, tipsy on the memory of the night before. The new buildings in the square are finally beginning to take shape, rising from the ground like sapling trees.

When they pass by the rubble that was once the district bakery, Katniss squeezes Peeta's hand tightly. He slows to a stop, letting his eyes rake over the charred wood and brick. "I'm starting to forget what it looked like," he tells her quietly. "I can't remember how many windows – were there five, or six?"

"I don't know," she says honestly. She'd never paid as much attention to the house itself as she did to the boy who lived inside of it. "Do you think…you might rebuild it?"

It's not the first time they've had this discussion, but he's always been hesitant. "I think so," he says. "I just…I need to do it right. I don't know if I want to build it _here_. There's all these bad memories, and…I want my kids to grow up happy. I don't want any ghosts hanging around."

Katniss doesn't answer. She knows that what he really means to say is _our _kids, but that he's also wise enough to know that this early on it will only frighten her away.

Peeta doesn't know that she doesn't want children; it was just never something that came up between the two of them. And though it eats at her, she doesn't have the heart to tell him that now, not when it would snuff out the pleasant glow still warming her belly from last night.

That night they have sex again, and already it feels better than the first time. Peeta uses his fingers to make her come, and once she's boneless and sated he empties himself inside of her with a strangled groan. It's not until after the fact that his eyebrows crease in worry. "You're um…you're on something, right?"

Katniss nods. There's a whole host of pills that she takes now, every day, to heal her burns and calm her anxiety and yes, prevent pregnancy. "Yes. But…I thought you wanted kids," she says guardedly.

Peeta laughs. "Someday. Not now. Can you imagine what we'd do with a baby?"

She cracks a smile. "Screw it up, basically."

"Basically." He grins back at her, and not for the first time she's struck by the fact that they ended up _here_, together, something close to happy and more or less in one piece. Maybe the odds were in their favor, after all.

Peeta wraps his arm around her waist and draws her closer in. She rests her head on his chest, calmed by the steady thrum of his heartbeat. "I don't know what I'd do without you," he says quietly. "I think about it sometimes, and…I have to make myself stop."

She tilts her head up to look at him, frowning. "I'm here." She pauses. "I'm not_ going_ anywhere."

"I know." He rests his chin on her hair, and sighs. "It just…it could've gone so many other ways."

"But it didn't." She pulls away a little to look him in the eye. "We're here. We'll always be here."

Peeta smiles softly, running his fingers through her hair. "I told you that once. But you didn't hear me. You were asleep."

"I heard you," she says. "I just didn't realize it at the time."

He kisses her, a little harder than she expects, and soon they're wrapped up in one another again, though she's still sensitive and yelps in surprise when his hand moves between her legs. When they finish they're tired and sweaty, and she curls her back against his chest, the sheets bunched around their waists.

Spring _is_ nice, she thinks, her mind clouding over with sleep.

Maybe, she thinks, she'll learn to remember it as the season when Peeta came home to her.

* * *

**Here's the poster I used for my prompt, though the only thing I really used was the title: cdn dot pastemagazine dot com slash www slash blogs slash lists slash 1966 dot jpg**

**Also, I should probably say that I don't actually think all of these things would've happened in the span of a year...especially the part with Peeta since I think it probably took them longer than that to get together...but obviously he had to be spring, haha.**


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